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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/26341513">The House That Jack Built</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/AvaCelt/pseuds/AvaCelt'>AvaCelt</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Series:</b></td><td>Black Clover Week - 2020 [2]</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Black Clover - Tabata Yuki (Anime &amp; Manga)</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Angst, Canon Compliant, Canon-Typical Violence, Emotional Baggage, M/M, One-Sided Relationship, Pining, Spoilers up to chapter 263</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-09-07</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-09-07</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-06 03:28:53</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Teen And Up Audiences</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>No Archive Warnings Apply</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>2,955</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/26341513</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/AvaCelt/pseuds/AvaCelt</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>Jack remembers it like it was yesterday, the first day he met Yami Sukehiro on a clean-up mission and fell in love under a sky full of fireworks. [one-sided Jack/Yami, written for Black Clover Week 2020]</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Jack the Ripper/Yami Sukehiro</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Series:</b></td><td>Black Clover Week - 2020 [2]</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Series URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/series/1912648</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>6</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>26</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Collections:</b></td><td>IAmStoryteller's Best of Black Clover Fic Rec</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>The House That Jack Built</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>
  <b>Black Clover Week 2020 - Fireworks</b>
</p>
    </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Jack remembers it like it was yesterday. He'd been nineteen years old, and apparently so had one Yami Sukehiro. Jack remembers a seaside shantytown, a dirty beach choked with plastics and debris, and fireworks above the ocean. He can still taste the the lobster in his mouth even though it's been a decade, and that same beach is now in better shape. Jack remembers.</p><p>He'd just started, four years later than the average rookie, and poor as hell to boot. He'd never expected to get in, of course. Jack had been a builder before he'd become Jack the Ripper. Where he comes from, there <em>still </em>isn't enough money to buy the fancy tools needed to chop, cut, and separate wood and other materials, but when Jack had been around, they'd used his magic. Jack had been happy to oblige, still is when he goes home during short leaves. Jack had built houses. He'd cut, spliced, and molded shapes with his knives and his hands. Before Jack the Ripper, there was Jack the Builder.</p><p>It'd been his sister who'd told him about the Magic Knights handing out recruitment leaflets in the town square. It'd never occurred to Jack to even apply since he'd never heard of a commoner being accepted into their ranks, but poverty spoke volumes, and when his sister had asked him if he would consider working for the King so that they could eat better, Jack had taken the exam the very next month. Jack had once built houses, but those houses hadn't fed him and his sister like they should have. Jack had grown thinner over the years. In contrast, his sister's cheeks had sunken into her face. She was only a year younger than him, and yet she'd looked as if she was ten years older.</p><p>A builder and a washerwoman, both born out of wedlock and belonging to different mothers, living day-to-day with few friends and fewer prospects – that had been the life of Jack the Builder.</p><p>And so Jack had found himself at a Magic Knights exam at nineteen instead of the traditional fifteen. Somehow, he'd passed, and then came the salary, and finally, a cape that marked him as a soldier of the King's court. His first mission? To clean up the beach of a seaside shantytown where a nearby seafood festival would conclude with fireworks over the ocean. Jack had received a trash stick and a shovel, but no dustpans, because Jack had been instructed to burn what we could, and then cut the rest into manageable pieces for the shantytown citizens to recycle for other uses.</p><p>Jack hadn't said anything, just taken his tools and went on his way, because he'd had a mouth on him even then, but it wasn't a mouth he'd felt like baring just yet. No one from his squad had offered to help, and Jack hadn't been dumb enough to believe it was a mere hazing ritual for the rookies. The other rookies had gotten pantsed in the morning, and then fed lamb and wine in the evening. Jack had been given a mission within hours of his acceptance into the Magic Knight squad, and he'd left just as they'd begun stuffing their mouths in the squad's grand hall. They'd been nobles, and Jack had been a nobody.</p><p>And that had suited Jack fine. Jack was Jack, <em>still </em>is Jack, and the Jack that grew up in a landlocked town that didn't even have access to a river and fresh fish, that Jack had known how to mind his business. Cleaning up some garbage on some hick town's beach suited Jack just fine.</p><p>And so Jack had went to work. He'd arrived a day early, so he'd begun separating burnables from plastic, and he'd been doing just fine all by his lonesome self until some shithead started yelling at him about there not being enough work left for them.</p><p>Jack had turned around ready to fight, because Jack is a fighter, will <em>always </em>be a fighter, but when he'd turned around that day, he'd stopped in his tracks. What he'd seen was out of this world. Jack had never fallen in love before, but he'd lusted enough times to know when to look away from something so beautiful, and yet, that fateful day, the closer the grey cape came towards him, the more Jack had wished the vision would never leave his eyes, because <em>what </em>was beauty, if not a beautiful man?</p><p>Jack remembers, because it's a vision he <em>still </em>desires. The grey cape eventually became a black cape, which is now nothing more than tatters. And yet, those tatters of a black cape are the vestiges of that first moment, that first meeting where a beautiful man in a thick grey cape had sauntered to him smoking a cigarette and smelling of tobacco and shit. The image hasn't left Jack's mind in the last ten years, and neither has the man in it.</p><p>Best not to let lust get to one's head, young Jack had thought that fateful day, and so had turned around and went back to work. And they'd never encountered each other ever again – young Jack and the man in the grey cape he recognized as a Magic Knight cape.</p><p>But that's now how the story goes, does it? Jack wishes it did, truly, <em>honestly</em> wishes that ten years ago, that had been the end of their tale, because if it had, then Jack wouldn't be sitting at his empty kitchen table with a knife and a mug of beer, etching Zenon Zogratis' name into the old wood and calculating who he could pay off to take him to Spade quietly so he could hunt down and murder the man that'd stolen from him, stolen from Jack the Ripper.</p><p>Even today, Jack has little, <em>keeps </em>little, puts little value in material things, doesn't pretend like he's anything more than the King's dog, because that's what he'd signed up for, and he'd promised himself he'd keep at it until his sister was set up nicely, and today she's doing just <em>fine</em>, even has her own little laundry business, and Jack's built her a bigger, better house.</p><p>Once upon a time, Jack had thought he was going to retire after a few years of service, after his sister was set up so he could go back to building houses and other things because Jack, he loves to build, even if he is an ugly little string bean with a scarred face courtesy of his drunken father, but <em>no</em>, the grey cape bastard hadn't let Jack go, hadn't let Jack fall behind, hadn't let Jack pretend he was only good for keeping his mouth shut and his hands busy, hadn't let anyone talk down to him because the bastard <em>believed </em>in him, and Jack <em>loves </em>him, is <em>in </em>love with him, and some god out there is cursing him for it.</p><p>Jack remembers, because ten years ago, he'd fallen in love.</p><p>The grey cape had only grabbed his shoulder and forced him to turn around, and Jack would have cut him to pieces if he was any other man, but this was a Grey Deer that Jack hadn't seen at the Magic Knights exam, so that meant that he was a superior officer, and Jack had <em>just </em>started this job and had a sister to take care of, so he hadn't made a move, just let the beautiful man put his hands on him, grab him by the collar and pull his face close even though the man was easily a foot shorter than Jack and ten times smellier, this beautiful, <em>annoying </em>shithead.</p><p>“<em>Goddamn </em>you're ugly,” Yami had deadpanned, and Jack <em>will </em>kill him, will skin him <em>alive </em>for getting himself captured by a Spade monarch of all people, for not being here right now to tell Jack how ugly he is just so Jack can call him ugly back.</p><p>“And you stink,” Jack had replied with a bored expression, and the rest was history.</p><p>Any other man, and Jack would have found another stretch of beach to work, but the Grey Deer that day had refused to let him out of his sight, calling it intuition or whatever, and so he'd cleaned the beach with Yami Sukehiro by his side, Yami going on and on for hours about one thing or another, while Jack had focused on his stick and shovel because he couldn't, <em>still</em> can't, look Yami in the eyes when he's radiating like some beacon in a lighthouse.</p><p>Yami hadn't stopped talking, not even when the sky had darkened and the festival was underway, not when he'd dragged Jack to a little beach hut that was apparently Yami's before he'd become a ward to the Captain of the Grey Deer, kept talking even as he'd pointed to the little wooden outhouse behind the shack that doubled as a bathroom and a shower, hadn't stopped talking even as they'd bathed six feet apart in the dark with buckets of ice cold water, Jack in his holey underwear and Yami in the nude because Yami had no shame.</p><p>He hadn't stopped talking even as he loaned Jack a too-big shirt and some clean pants, and had claimed that he wasn't going to let Jack walk into the festival dressed like a field mouse because Yami's mother had taught him to be nice to ugly people when Jack had asked why he was being so nice.</p><p>Jack had never planned to attend the festival. He'd planned to work until the revelers came to the beach to see the fireworks, and then quietly slip away for some food and sleep before rising the following day to finish the rest of the job. Jack had little money, so food was going to be scraps people left behind on festival tables, and sleep was going to be against some tree or in alley. Jack had planned to fade into the background, and Yami had refused to let him.</p><p>Jack remembers, because before that day, Jack had never had anyone in his life he could remotely call a friend. His sister is still his sister, but Yami had been different, <em>is </em>different. Yami had known nothing about him except that he was in Green Mantis robes, and yet Yami had willingly worked by his side, had taken one look at his frayed clothes and fucked up face and decided that they were going to be friends.</p><p>Jack remembers, because he'd held his tongue the entire clean-up the first day, and hadn't even given Yami his name until the alcohol started to flow.</p><p>A rack of lobster tails and eight beers later, Jack the Commoner had made a point to call out Yami Sukehiro's tobacco addiction, and an equally drunk Yami Sukehiro had challenged him to a fight for dishonoring his good cigarettes, and then they'd both ended up brawling so hard that four men had to carry their asses to the curb before banning them from the tavern for the foreseeable future, two drunken shitheads with their Magic Knight capes back at Yami's hut, one with a green praying mantis and the other with a grey deer.</p><p>Jack remembers, because when alcohol flows, so does the truth. He'd started talking as soon as they'd landed on the curb, and went on and on as Yami led them through the crowded streets and back to his little beach hut. Jack had talked and talked and talked, when he'd promised himself that he wouldn't, when he'd promised himself that he'd keep his trap shut for his sister's sake, but an asshole with a beautiful face and a lovely smile got him so drunk that he'd bared his soul in his first seventy-two hours on the job, had told Yami that he'd never planned on becoming a Magic Knight, didn't even think Clover Kingdom <em>had </em>commoner knights, but did what he had to do for the sake of his sister because he was no coward, and that he'd die for her if need be because she'd do the same for him.</p><p>And the beautiful bastard had just laughed. Somehow, they'd found themselves back on the beach, in front of Yami's little hut, just as the sky lit up with the first fireworks. Jack remembers the fireworks, because that's when he'd stopped talking. That's when his eyes looked up, because he couldn't bear to look at the beautiful man next to him.</p><p>Yami had smoked his cigarette while Jack had stared wistfully up at the sky, watching colors burst alive in the darkness of night, bringing life back into the people below. Somewhere along the way, Yami's head had found itself on Jack's shoulder, and then Yami was snoring, but Jack was still looking up, up at the sky and fireworks, willing himself to sit as still as possible so that he could match his breathing with Yami's, this stinky boulder of a man who'd walked up to him like he'd owned the beach, this annoying shithead who'd forced a friendship and broken Jack in under a day, broken him so much that Jack's suffering to <em>this day</em>, is dying inside knowing that he couldn't be there to help Yami when he needed him the most.</p><p>So Jack remembers – Jack remembers those fireworks, the stink of cigarette smoke, remembers a beautiful man sleeping on his bony shoulder, snoring as if the world was at peace, as if Jack wasn't just a stranger, a man who'd unknowingly kept Jack around in the Magic Knights longer than he'd ever intended to be.</p><p>And that's why Jack doesn't feel bad about what he's going to do next. He <em>will </em>find Zenon, will kill him ten times over, and then he's going to find Yami, and he's going to kill <em>Yami </em>ten times over, but unlike Zenon, Yami will get a kiss from him. Jack will tell him how much he loves him, and carry him home where it's safe. Only then will he accept Yami's rejection.</p><p>Because he knows – he knows Yami doesn't love him the way he loves Yami, and yet, the shithead <em>always</em> has the nerve to get into dire situations Jack <em>has </em>to rescue him from, and then doubleback on <em>Jack </em>for trying to help <em>him</em>. Jack's going to kill the little hypocrite, beat the shit out of him for calling him a string bean when he's out here getting kidnapped like some stupid fairy tale princess. He'll kick him in the balls, too, tell him he's a little bitch for leaving his subordinates crying, and then kiss him, kiss him so hard that Yami will know of every iota of love Jack's been carrying in his chest for the last ten years.</p><p>And if Yami tells him no, tells him that he doesn't feel the same way, then it will be fine. Jack's overstayed his welcome anyway, he doesn't <em>care </em>what the other Magic Knights do, because he knows this is his do-or-die. His sister will hate him for ending up in jail, but he'll beg for her forgiveness when she comes to visit, because she will, because she loves her idiot brother, and Jack the Ripper is the world's stringiest idiot, and he's fine with it. He's going to rescue Yami Sukehiro all by his lonesome self, because this is his last chance, he can't let Yami leave this world without knowing Jack's truth.</p><p>Jack finishes off his beer and looks critically at the scratched up kitchen table. He looks at Zenon Zogratis' named etched in his ugly scrawl, and the scythes appear subconsciously, and before Jack knows it, his kitchen table and beer mug are in pieces and he's screaming curse words at a beautiful man who's been kidnapped, a man he loves so dearly that toxic rage fills every fiber of his being, and he wants nothing more than to slash Zenon Zogratis to atoms, and then make love to Yami Sukehiro bathed in the Spade monarch's blood.</p><p>“But if you say yes,” Jack says abruptly to no one in particular, “I'm gonna take yer dumbass back to that stupid seafood festival.” Jack blinks back tears and stares blearily at the scythes on his arms. “And I'm gonna build ya a better hut in that hick town of yers,” he promises. The smile is automatic, because the thought of a better future is just as toxic as his rage. “And I'm gonna fuck ya on the beach kekeke.”</p><p>It's all the motivation he needs, just a tiny inkling of hope, the thought of a future where Yami accepts his love, where Jack carries him home and Yami lets him. It's a future where he gets to introduce his sister to his beloved, it's one where Jack builds a home, a home he can die in when he's too old to get up.</p><p>He's got money and influence now, and so all he has to do is throw coin at the right person so Jack can get into Zenon Zogratis' lair in one piece, and the rest is easy from there. All Yami has to do is wait.</p><p>“So wait for me, shithead,” Jack the Ripper cackles to himself while fishing out a bag of coins he keeps under a floorboard in the kitchen because he doesn't believe in banks. He tosses on his cape and heads for the door, knowing that these are his last days in Clover Kingdom as a free man.</p><p>Because somewhere along the way, Jack the Commoner had become Jack the Builder, who then became Jack the Ripper, who's now something different, something stronger.</p><p>So all Yami has to do is wait for Jack – Jack, the man who loves him.</p>
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